Abstract
Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) has long been known to identify poor/dyslexic readers. The mechanism underpinning RAN are often associated with phonological processing so we set out to determine to what extent eye movements contribute to RAN and text reading ability. Thirty typical readers and 18 poor readers (M age = 7.15), were assessed for phonological awareness, reading, and RAN. RAN was assessed while eye movements were being recorded. Poor/dyslexic readers demonstrated significantly longer fixation durations and more fixations per correctly named stimulus (defined as fixation efficiency). Fixation duration and fixation efficiency together were significant predictors of RAN (89%), reading accuracy (27%), reading comprehension (24%), and reading rate (33%), after controlling for phonological awareness and nonverbal intelligence (which together contributed 4%, 19%, 12%, and 2% respectively). Our results suggest that RAN is more closely related to fixation function than phonological skill and argue against the view that RAN is simply a measure of phonological processing. Rather, RAN should be conceptualised as a surrogate of the reading process including organized, sequential eye movements and selective shifts of attention, via accurate saccades and fixations between familiar objects of interest, requiring rapid icon identification and access to the lexicon for naming.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017